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Ode

Peyton Houston

Issue 102, Spring 1987

1.

Then to go there in the duskyheavy air of that place yet alwayscarrying in the shieldingpalm of your hand lamp of a flameestablishing the decisive center which isindeed light. Now you can seewhat you had lived and lived by, what theywhom you had known, had lived andlived by, now glimpse a littlewhat those who would come after you wouldlive and live by, and again in themthe visualization of your own passage whichonly now you begin to realize wherefromand whereto. They, all of them,are about you now, vaguely visible but notspeaking and what blood can you offer themexcept your own that there beany speaking of this, any moment ofexchange of astonishment that there waswhat there was, had been what there had been? 'youspeak to them: they do not answer and nowit does not matter as you begin to understandthis and the why of this. Yon carry the lamp’s flamealong the dark galleries, up and downstairways, through silent rooms whichgive on to other rooms. The light is very smallbut sufficient and casts you in many shadowsabout yourself which are never you but which indicatethat there is a you. Once you had a threadwhich you unrolled as you went so that it couldlead you back. Now it is gone: it ranout. Nor does that matter.